Chinese Fraudsters Are Reportedly Selling Walnuts Filled With Cement

In the past few days, a number of sites,
including Shanghaiist and
Rocket News, have reported on a strange phenomenon — Chinese
fraudsters filling walnut shells with rocks and cement and
selling them as fresh walnuts.

This video, which explains how to spot a fake walnut, has also
been doing the rounds:

The trade in fake walnuts may sound ridiculous, but there is some
more evidence to support the stories.

For example,
last year Chinese news site Netease reported that a man in
Zhengzhou city, Henan province, had bought 2.5 kilos of walnut
from a street vendor only to find they were full of concrete
chips.

The scam goes like this — the walnut husk had been emptied of its
nutmeat, filled with concrete and paper and then glued shut
again. For the fraudsters, they can almost double their profits
with the trick, selling both the nutmeat and the fake nuts.